TAUNTON CASTLE. 31 



close to, and flush wlth, tlie front of the gate-house, which 

 is evidently a later addition to the other buildlngs of the 

 south front. To the east of the gate-house, a building, 

 very simllar in character to that on the west, extends nearly 

 to the south-western angle of the platform on which I 

 suppose the Noi'man keep to have stood. It is without 

 buttresses, the masonry very coarse and irregulär, being 

 little better than rubble Avork, and decldedly unlike that of 

 the round tower which flanked its eastern extremity, little 

 more than the foundation of which now exists. Imme- 

 diately within the wall Stands the house occupied by Mr. 

 Dyer, apparently a building of the fifteenth Century, but 

 probably containing portions of much earlier date. The 

 school-house, also, founded by Bishop Fox in the year 

 1522, Stands immediately within the southern ramparts of 

 the Castle, and is a very excellent specimen of the 

 domestic architecture of the beginning of the sixteenth 

 Century. 



This is all that I have been able to trace of perhaps 

 the most important of the nine Castles which are known 

 to have existed in this county ; and I feel that I ought to 

 apologize for having occupied your time with so meagre 

 and unsatisfactory a series of conjectures ; for in truth they 

 are little more. It is now generally allowed by architec- 

 tural antiquaries, that it is almost impossible accurately to 

 determine the date, even of ecclesiastical edifices, merely 

 by the style of the architecture, without the aid of docu- 

 mentary evidence ; and if the difficulty be great when the 

 strict rules of ecclesiastical architecture kept in order the 

 exuberant fancies of the builder, it is very much increased 

 in the case of domestic and castellated fabrics, where these 

 rules were much relaxed and varied to suit the convenience 

 of the inhabitants and the circumstances of the locality. 



